The story of Gizela - Afik Shiraz. Abinun Shmuel

Cila had a lot of energy. She didn't play with dolls or with other girls but preferred to go wild with the boys to play football. Though Cila was smaller than me, she was the one who kept me. I was, if using the Serbian phrase, "Like a drop of water in the palm of a hand," while Cila was very playful. In Croatian language, June month is called "Lipani" the Linden tree which blooms that month. Cila loved to climb on the trunk, up to the leaves, and wiped the yellow flowers, which she brought home and we used it as tea. Near our house grew a chestnut tree that yielded wild, inedible fruits; Cila collected these chestnuts and played them five stones or marbles. She was also a big talkative. When we were going to visit our grandmother, she would not stop talking for a moment, and the adults told her, "We'll give you two dinars if you shut up for two minutes”. She could never stay silent for two minutes! That was Cila. Initially, we were not similar at all. I was tall and stayed high until I was twelve, while she was much lower than me. It took her few years, but she eventually caught up the gap and continued to grow long after I stopped. Our faces were very similar, so that many of her school friends would say, "What, you don't know me? Why do you go with your nose up?" and I would soon recall and say, "You probably think I’m Cila " - "So you are not?" they would ask in astonishment and I would reply, "No, I'm a Gizela". Later, when my son was born, Sami (Shmuel), Cila walked with him many times and so did I and then people didn't know who is who. She was very sweet, my younger sister, very talented in inventing stories for her children, and like me, she also loved to solve puzzles, but as a child, she loved just play outside. My parents never interfered. Didn't bother them she ran and ran, while for me they didn't stop care for a moment; don’t go here or don’t go there, don’t dance, nor swim - to eliminate additional leg damage. As a child, Vishegrad looked huge: There were three mosques, Catholic Church, Serbian Church and Jewish Synagogue. The population of the city counted a total of about 5,000 people: Muslims, Catholic Christians and Orthodox, some 20 Jewish families – some of them Spanish and other were Ashkenazi - and a community of Muslim Gypsies who did not migrate and lived in a separate neighborhood. In 1938, a factory was inaugurated not far from our home, an arms factory "Wistad", and another 3,000 people were added to the town. When I came back after many years to visit Vishegrad, in the year 1988, I was surprised to find out how small it was, as if it were possible to lay it all on one palm. The relationship with our non-Jewish neighbors in the town was excellent. When they marked their holidays, my mother used to bake cakes and help both Serbs and Muslims. I don't remember any anti-Semitic incident until the outbreak of war. Murka, daughter of a Gypsy resident who worked as a postman, started working in our house as an assistant when she was twelve. She stayed with us for six years during which she studied housekeeping, and when she grew up she married one of the police officers who worked at the station opposite to our home and received dowry from my parents as a gift.

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